1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to portable information gathering equipment such as a pen computer and, more particularly, to a portable information gather apparatus which can function to manage captured information on a page basis, and an information management method by the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, pen computers and other similar devices have been coming into widespread use as portable information gathering equipment. There are being developed pen computers which can not only record information written on a tablet-screen with an input pen, but can also capture images and spoken statements. There are increasing tendencies to enhance the multifunctional features of such pen computers for greater convenience.
FIG. 21 is a schematic block-diagram showing conventional portable information gathering equipment constructed to perform the function of recording information written on a tablet screen with an input pen and also the function of capturing images and voice inputs. This portable information gathering equipment is constituted primarily by a CPU 1, a ROM 2 in which processing programs and the like are stored, a data memory 3, a tablet 6 which combines a digitizer 4 and an LCD 5 into one piece, an image input device 7, a voice input device 8, a voice output device 9, an information gathering menu selector 10, and a system bus 11 for connecting these components to the CPU 1.
Judging from the illustrated configuration, this type of conventional portable information gathering equipment is designed to capture image and voice information in addition to the pen input information which is known as xe2x80x9cink informationxe2x80x9d captured through the tablet 6.
In the conventional portable information gathering equipment, however, whenever entering information, a menu selection has to be performed through the information gathering menu selector 11 to properly set the mode in accordance with the type of information to be captured before entering the information. For instance, to enter an image and then characters, the mode must be set first for image input to capture an image, then the mode must changed to character input to take in characters.
For the portable information gathering equipment to be user-friendly, all the different types of captured information, namely, the image information, the voice information, and the ink information, should be handled as a collection on a page basis (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cpage dataxe2x80x9d). For example, to record the information about a certain product in terms of one-page information, it would be convenient to enter the image of the product and add the description of the image in terms of voice information or ink information entered using a pen, thus handling all the image, voice, and ink information as a piece of page data, that is, handling them in units of pages.
More specifically, it is desirable that multimedia information, including image information, voice information, and ink information, captured by a user arbitrarily be stored automatically in a storing means as page data, i.e. a single piece of collective data on a page basis without the need for operation by the user so that the user is not even aware of the processing.
This type of conventional portable information gathering equipment, however, has not been designed to automatically handle all of the image information, voice information, and ink information as page data for each page without the need for the performance of operations by the user of the equipment.
Furthermore, this type of information gathering equipment handles a wide variety of information and the volume may be as large as over 100 pages. Therefore, the user is required to manage entered information by alarm setting or some other method according to the type of information when reading a particular piece of information from among the information which has been stored, or reading all related information, or if entered information has any time limit.
In this type of conventional portable information gathering equipment such as a pen computer, it is possible to manage the captured information to a certain extent by setting an alarm or the like by writing date, time, contents of information, etc. according to a predetermined format. However, if such equipment allows information including pen input, image, and voice information to be entered as desired while it does not have any specified format, then it would have to have a function for managing such information whenever it is entered.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a portable information gathering apparatus and an information management method in the same which obviate the need of setting mode according to information to be captured whether it is image information, voice information, or ink information, which enable a user thereof to enter any type of information as he or she desires, and which permit efficient management of information by efficiently retrieving desired information among entered information, by associating the information on different pages, or by providing information with alarms.
To this end, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a portable multimedia information gathering apparatus for gathering and displaying entered information and for also storing the gathered information, which is equipped at least with: information input means for entering information; page adding icon setting means for pasting an icon corresponding to the information, which has been entered for each page equivalent to one screen by the information input means, to a specified page; and data storing means wherein the information entered through the information input means and the information regarding the icon pasted to the specified page are written at a specified address.
The information to be entered is at least one of: information entered through the input/display tablet for capturing information when the screen thereof is touched and also for displaying the captured information; image information entered through image input means, and voice information, or spoken statements, entered through voice input means.
The icon pasted to the specified page is at least one of: an icon for managing the information captured in respective pages by time-related data such as date and time; an icon for specifying a particular page; an icon serving as a memorandum guide; and an icon for managing the information captured in the respective pages by the type of information.
The information regarding the icon pasted on the specified page written to the data storing means is the information indicating the type of icon and positional information indicating the position where the icon is pasted. The icon information for the icon for managing information captured in the respective pages by the time-related data such as date and time is the time-related information including date and time as well as the information indicating the type of icon and the positional information.
With this arrangement, an icon corresponding to information captured on each page can be pasted to captured information, and these different types of icons are pasted on a page basis as desired, thus enabling the pages to be managed by the types of icons pasted on the pages. This makes it possible to set such functions as alarm, To Do, quick call, and automatic erase in units of pages, to permit a background stamp such as a telephone memorandum to be pasted on each page, and to classify page information by type by using the icons. These features are extremely convenient for managing and retrieving data which has been entered.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information managing method in a portable multimedia information gathering apparatus which gathers and displays entered information and also stores the gathered information, whereby an icon, which corresponds to the information captured for each page equivalent to one screen by information input means, can be pasted to a specified page, and when the icon has been pasted in a predetermined position on the page, the information entered through the information input means together with the information regarding the pasted icon are written at a specified address in data storing means, thus implementing information management based on the written information regarding the icon.
The information to be entered is at least one of the information captured through the input/display tablet which captures information when the screen thereof is touched, the image information captured through the image input means, and the voice information captured through the voice input means.
The icon pasted on a specified page is at least one of the following icons: an icon for managing information captured into the pages by time-related data such as date and time; an icon for specifying a particular page; an icon serving as a memorandum guide; and an icon for managing information captured into the pages by the type of information.
The information regarding the icon pasted on the specified page which is written to the data storing means is the information indicating the type of icon and the positional information indicating the position where the icon is pasted. The information regarding the icon, if the icon is the one for managing the information captured into the pages by time-related data such as date and time, is the information related to time including date and time.
Use of the method described above allows icons to be pasted according to the information captured into the pages and also the pages to be managed by the type of icon by pasting different types of icons as desired in units of pages. This makes it possible to set such functions as alarm, To Do, quick call, and automatic erase in units of pages, to permit a background stamp such as a telephone memorandum to be pasted on each page, and to classify page information by type by using the icons. These features are extremely convenient for managing and retrieving data which has been entered. Applying the method in accordance with the present invention to a pen computer or the like turns it into an extremely user-friendly pen computer.